The Gray Street Farmers Market, Knob Hill Farms CSA subscriptions and UofL’s Community Gardens, all in collaboration with UofL’s Sustainability Council, can help campus neighbors and Cardinals supplement grocery store produce. These options can provide healthy alternatives, reduced costs and decreased individual environmental impact.

“Nothing is more indicative of unsustainable living than our widespread disconnection from the most fundamental thing that sustains us, where and how our food is grown,” said UofL’s Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability Initiatives��Justin Mog. “These initiatives represent the university’s best efforts to reconnect us to the land, the ecology, the local economies and the people that we cannot live without.”

Each program below is open to the public:

• 
  Thursdays, 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
  June – September

• 
  Pickups Tuesday at UofL 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
  CSA Subscriptions

• 
  Alternating Saturdays, 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
• 
  Summer Garden Gatherings:��Urban & Public Affairs Garden 7 p.m., Mondays;
  Garden Commons 12 p.m., Thursdays

Knob Hill Farms and Community Supported Agriculture

Since 2004, Keith McKenzie and his family have managed Knob Hill Farm’s 26 acres, including two acres of USDA-certified organic farmland, to share healthy and locally grown produce with Louisville’s residents. When McKenzie moved with his wife to Louisville to work on his master’s degree in social work, the pair rented plots to garden while living in the city. The community they found in Louisville and their love of gardening were the beginning sprout of Knob Hill Farms. The connections made through gardening encouraged McKenzie to expand his gift for gardening and community building to Knob Hill Farms and, ultimately, community-supported agriculture (CSA).

“What we want to do is share what it’s like to grow produce, what it’s like to farm, what it’s like to encounter nature on multiple fronts,” McKenzie said.

Knob Hill Farms is able to operate thanks to their CSA subscriptions, which allow customers to buy a share in the farm for the season by supporting the work and reaping the harvest through weekly in-season provisions. Each week, McKenzie meets subscribers at one of his pickup locations, including a stop at UofL’s Belknap Campus. At these pickups, McKenzie hears directly from customers about their upcoming needs from Knob Hill Farms which allows him to adapt crop choices. Farmers Markets and CSA create mutually beneficial relationships between farmers and their customers without additional cost or damage from a third-party grocery store.

“There’s been a move to modernize and to embrace technology. At what cost and at what expense? I believe in the exchange for convenience and in pursuit of, ultimately, the American Dream. We gave up power. We gave up control of how we prepare food and what is in the food that’s prepared for us,” McKenzie said. “And for my wife and me, this – I believe – is an opportunity for us to gain some control, some power, some sense of liberation.”

Gray Street Farmers Market�� �� ��

Begun in 2009, the Gray Street Farmers Market (GSFM) is a project of in partnership with the Louisville Metro Dept. of Public Health and Wellness and Catholic Charities Common Earth Gardens. Their goal is to increase access to fresh food in downtown Louisville. In addition to providing access to affordable, locally grown produce, the market welcomes craft vendors, food trucks and partners like the Louisville Free Public Library. The market is open every Thursday, 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. from June through September, rain or shine.

The GSFM offers several food access programs to provide support to customers enrolled in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP) and seniors. SNAP dollars can be tripled at the Gray Street Farmers Market through the Triple Dollar Program.

UofL Community Gardens

Seeking out local produce may not take you much further than your own backyard, neighborhood or campus. Gardening is another way to shorten your grocery store list while decreasing environmental damage. UofL’s two community gardens, Garden Commons and Urban & Public Affairs Garden, are cared for and harvested by students, staff, faculty and public volunteers. Each week, volunteers meet to care for the garden, learn and enjoy a share of the produce.

The University of Louisville and are embarking on a new project to answer that question and discover how changing a place can improve the health of its residents. A $500,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will fund an 18-month study to identify the features all neighborhoods should have in order to promote the health of all residents.

Researchers from Simmons’ Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. Center for Racial Justice and UofL’s , along with urban studies expert Michael Emerson of Rice University and legal scholar Shavonnie Carthens of the University of Kentucky, will survey residents of two Louisville neighborhoods, review existing data on environmental factors that affect health and consider legal aspects of neighborhood development, all with the goal of defining a “universal basic neighborhood” (UBN). A universal basic neighborhood is one that has all the necessary community assets that help residents thrive in their place.

The most recent from the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, published in 2017, highlights stark differences in morbidity and mortality of those living in different neighborhoods across the city. For example, in Louisville’s predominantly Black communities, life expectancy is as much as 12.6 years less than in the most affluent, predominantly white communities. Black babies born from 2011-2015 have a death rate 1.95 times higher than the Louisville Metro average and 2.31 times higher than white babies. Diabetes, heart disease and cancer rates vary by location, race and income.

“We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and we still have places where living conditions contribute to diseases that are entirely preventable,” said Ted Smith, director of the UofL Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil, part of the Envirome Institute. “This work is about diagnosing and treating places so that the health benefits are shared by many.”

Most existing efforts to address health inequities focus on providing health resources to eligible individuals. This study instead looks for ways to improve health at the neighborhood level by providing resources that make it easier for residents to make healthy choices.

“Neighborhoods, no matter where they are, are not inherently bad or good. They’re just neighborhoods. However, one thing that makes neighborhoods different from each other is access to health-supportive resources,” said Nancy Seay, chair of the James R. L. Diggs Department of Sociology at Simmons. “We know that every neighborhood has a rich fabric of local resources that residents access, and we want to uncover these and promote their utilization. Everyone, no matter where they live, wants and deserves to enjoy good health and a long life. This project can be a game changer for the way we think about designing and supporting neighborhoods and their residents.”

The scope of the research

The research team, led by Seay and Smith, will assemble evidence for place-based factors that are associated with good health, identify and map assets in two demographically distinct Louisville neighborhoods, examine the history of civic investment in Louisville and determine how to develop and implement city policy that supports health.

In the same vein as historic efforts to ensure clean drinking water and waste removal for entire communities, the UBN project will assess and rank factors that contribute to longer, healthier lives, such as opportunities for exercise and recreation, greenness and access to healthy food and transportation. This project approaches health equity with the idea that it is more efficient to invest in resources that benefit the health of all residents of underserved neighborhoods than in health interventions for individuals.

In the first stage of the project, set to start in September, Seay will lead work to map assets of Louisville’s Crescent Hill and California neighborhoods. Students in her Participatory Action Research class at Simmons will conduct door-to-door surveys, interviews and focus groups in those neighborhoods to reveal how residents of those communities find good health, what aspects of their environment they believe contribute to health and how empowered they feel to make changes. They also hope to identify important assets related to the specific interests and culture of those living in the neighborhoods that have not been studied previously. UofL students also may take the class through a reciprocal agreement with Simmons.

At UofL, Smith will lead a review of published studies that can help justify components of a UBN and provide criteria for weighting those components. Factors evaluated will include those that contribute to disease and those that promote health, such as access to parks, forms of transit and the variety of educational, recreational and entertainment venues.

Carthens, a legal scholar at the UK’s J. David Rosenberg College of Law and formerly at UofL’s Brandeis School of Law, will delve into the deep drivers of policies that must be reformed in order to achieve an optimal neighborhood environment. She will identify the legal framework required to support the public provision of a UBN and sectors of society best positioned to provide these resources.

The project also includes Emerson, Chavanne Fellow in Religion and Public Policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute and co-founder of Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

At the project’s completion, the team expects to have a “playbook” that will assist communities in defining their own neighborhood needs and outline steps toward implementing the plan.

For more information:

Residents of the California and Crescent Hill neighborhoods who are interested in participating in surveys or focus group interviews for the project may contact Patricia Reeves at ��patricia.reeves@simmonscollegeky.edu

Community Partners who are interested in learning more about the project and opportunities for collaboration may contact Lauren Anderson at lauren.anderson@louisville.edu.

Project updates will be shared on social media at and the .

Some UofL faculty have served on the Mayor’s task force for the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness project. Other faculty and students are helping with check-in and screenings, administering vaccines, assisting with volunteer supervision and training, and observing individuals post-vaccine to ensure they have no adverse reactions.

“I’m helping because I have a commitment to service,” said Master’s Entry into Professional Nursing student Matt Livers. “I believe we have an opportunity to turn the tide on this pandemic and I would much rather be doing something than waiting for something to happen.”

Livers says this experience will help him gain extra experience in giving vaccines, along with serving as a resource for those who have questions about the COVID-19 vaccine. Educating the public, he says, is key to community acceptance and willingness to become vaccinated.

This isn’t the first time nursing and other health professions students and faculty have provided help for a drive-thru vaccination clinic in Louisville. In 2009, thousands of doses of the H1N1 “swine” flu vaccine were administered by UofL faculty and students at Cardinal Stadium.

Health professions students and faculty will help staff the COVID-19 vaccination drive-thru event through February, or as long as the city’s health department continues the effort. ­­­The health department’s mass vaccination site is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and is offering the Moderna vaccine by appointment only. It is first focused on the Tier 1a group, as mandated by the federal government. Frequently asked questions and answers about the mass vaccination site can be found��.

“I am confident that as our Chief Health Strategist, Dr. Moyer will provide strong leadership to help realize one of the primary goals of my administration – to make Louisville a much healthier place,” Fischer said.��

“Already, she has spearheaded the expansion of Louisville’s Smoke-Free Ordinance to include electronic cigarettes and hookah products, the establishment of Kentucky’s first Syringe Exchange Program, and the national accreditation of the department.”

“I’m honored by the confidence Mayor Fischer has shown in me,” Moyer said.�� “I look forward to working with the fine staff of the department and with all of our community partners to improve the health of our city.”��

Moyer also will hold an appointment on the faculty of the ��Department of Health Management and Systems Sciences. She most recently worked as assistant professor in UofL’s Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine, a position she has held since 2013.

“Although all schools of public health seek relationships with local and state health departments, the longstanding partnership between LMPHW and SPHIS is unique,” said the school’s dean, Craig Blakely, PhD, MPH. “Dr. Moyer is a true joint-appointed faculty member in the school, not an honorary adjunct, which is often the case in other communities. We are truly excited that she is taking on the role of health director and look forward to a growing collaborative relationship.”��

Moyer joined the Department of Public Health and Wellness in January 2015 as Medical Director. She also served as the department’s interim health director from January 2015 – April 2016 following the departure of Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, who assumed directorship of the Washington D.C. Department of Health.�� ��

As medical director, Moyer, a board certified family physician, oversaw clinic operations. As the city’s Chief Health Strategist, she works with all sectors of the community to affect policy, systems and environmental changes to make Louisville and its citizens healthier.��

She also currently serves as co-chair of the , a group of leaders from government, business, educational, ��civic and nonprofit organizations who are working to improve the physical, mental and social well-being of Louisville residents with the goal of increasing the number of healthy days – quality of life – by 20 percent by 2020 and beyond.

Moyer earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Temple University School of Medicine In Philadelphia. While at Temple, she formed the Emergency Action Corps and worked in sub-acute disaster areas throughout Central and South America after such first-responder agencies as the Red Cross had left. She served in Honduras, El Salvador and Bolivia in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

She completed her Family Medicine Residency at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. In 2012 she was named “Outstanding Resident” by the North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians. Before entering medical school, she earned a Master’s in Public Health with honors from Dartmouth. She earned her undergraduate degree from Colorado College, where she majored in physics.

Moyer is married to Dr. Jed Moyer, a pediatric orthopedic physician with Norton Healthcare. They have three sons — twin 3-year-olds and a 1-year-old.

Moyer succeeds Dr. Joanne Schulte, who became Louisville’s Director of Health in April, 2016. Schulte did not renew her contract and returned to the Houston area.

Mayor Greg Fischer recently made the announcement at the Gray Street Farmers Market, a collaboration between the University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences and��Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness. He was joined by Dr. Craig Blakely, dean of the school, and Fourth District Metro Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith.

“Farmers Markets are an important way to get healthy food to our neighborhoods, particularly any areas of our city that may not have ready access to fresh produce,” the Mayor said. “They also are a great opportunity for our local and regional farmers and entrepreneurs to support their operations. They help our community thrive.”

The LFMA helps member markets increase their capacity and growth by assisting with marketing, financial advisement, and vendor and volunteer recruitment. The association receives staff support from the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness and Louisville Forward, along with the Kentucky Department of Public Health Community Health Action Team (CHAT) Grant.

Another benefit of the LFMA is that it will assist families who use (SNAP) benefits.

“Our weekly Gray Street Farmers Market brings fresh, nutrient-rich foods into our neighborhood and supports healthy eating — an important factor in disease prevention and overall wellness,” said Dean Blakely. “We are thankful to Metro Council District Four Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith for funding for our Dollar for Dollar program, which allows SNAP customers to double their food dollars and makes local produce more affordable.”

“I am excited about this new Louisville Farmers Market Association,” said Councilwoman Sexton Smith. “Farmers Markets like the Gray Street Farmers Market and the Phoenix Hill Farmers Market are making locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables available to many of our neighbors who don’t have a full-service grocery store.”

The Louisville Farmers Market Association also has produced the new first annual Guide to Local Food Resources. The guide maps out the city’s farmers markets, as well as other places where consumers can find local healthy foods. These include New Roots’ Fresh Stop Markets and Healthy in a Hurry Corner Stores. .